Month: September 2016

Astute readers may have noticed that each month, Roaring Fork Lifestyle has a theme that is announced on its cover. I had been working with a “music and musicians” theme when some basic math convinced me to change that.

Locals are so accustomed to seeing wildlife in the streets that bears, deer and wild turkeys scarcely merit a mention. But when photographer Renee Ramge moved from Carbondale to Redstone recently, she was surprised to find a bobcat in her backyard. She hastily snapped a photo, initially thinking the wild cat was a lynx. The Colorado Parks & Wildlife Department, which requests online reporting of the rare lynx, advises that the two cats are similar in size and appearance. However, the tail of a lynx is “completely black, as if the tail had been dipped in ink.” The tip of a bobcat’s tail has a black spot on the top, is white underneath and often has several black stripes.

One of the best aspects of Carbondale’s Mountain Fair is purchasing a one-of-a-kind craft from the artist who made it. Wild Feather and Stone jewelry by Emily Gustafson presents such an opportunity. The author of this article purchased a leather bracelet with a freshwater pearl and chalcedony quartz, and then went back to buy matching earrings.

The valley is rocking with every style of music you can imagine from classical, blues, rock and roll from the 50’s to the latest—Glitch Soulazz. Vocal artists coo, croon and belt out their melodies for all to enjoy.
There is another type of symphony that only a small percentage of us get to enjoy—the Symphony of the Rocky Mountains during Elk Rut. Late in August and through September, the mating season goes into in full swing for these shadows of the forest; some hunters call them ghosts because it’s an animal weighing 800 pounds of more that appears and disappears as if it was never there.

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators recently awarded its 2015 Book Launch Award to children’s writer Nancy Bo Flood of Glenwood Springs. The annual award, established in 2012, provides authors or illustrators with $2,000 in funds to supplement the promotion and marketing of newly published works for children.

Jonathan Gorst hasn’t had a day off since June 17 of this year.
“That’s when we re-opened the Riviera Supper Club after the previous owners decided to sell,” he says. “And things have been a bit of a whirlwind since then. I guess being so busy is self-inflicted, but what can I say? I love what I do.”

I consider my material: about 14 inches of 3/8″ round, hot-rolled steel. Hot cut on both ends. I decide I will upset one end to build a mass for the head of my spoon.
I have been making spoons during most of the days that I work at the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park blacksmith shop. Why? For Alloy: the Malleability of Metals, a show I am co-curating with Natasha Seedorf at the Launchpad Gallery. The show hangs through October.

Illène Pevec, the program director for Fat City Farmers, a food education program in Basalt, recently authored Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health and Joy.
Authentic youth voices abound in the book as Pevec interviews more than 90 teens who hail from programs in New York, New Mexico, Colorado and California. As Pevec enables young organic gardeners and farmers to articulate the transformations that occur as they grow food for themselves and their communities; their voices reveal both how valuable gardening is to urban youth and what aspects of the programs described have the greatest positive impacts.

No way that a few thundershowers were going to rain on the parade of Roaring Fork locals who turned up for Jazz Aspen Snowmass over Labor Day weekend! Here’s the proof that hundreds turned out for all that jazz. Photos by Renee Ramge.

Dr. Dave Jensen is known as a celebrity chiropractor to many of the top-tier athletes who frequent the Roaring Fork Valley. The website for the WIN Health Institute, which he founded in 2001, includes endorsements from top athletes like speed skiing champion Don Strickland, World Cup ski racer Jake Zemanski, St. Louis Blues pro hockey player Larry Giroux, martial artist Sundar Mim, ironman Kirk Harley, NASCAR driver Wally Dallenbach, pro football player Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers and rock drummer Ray DiBacco.

For eons, canines have been our companions. Between 18,000 to 30,000 years ago, wild canids became domesticated. Some scientists theorize that these creatures, precursors to the dogs we know and love today, domesticated humans (not the other way around)!

Recently, Roaring Fork Lifestyle talked with Michael Picore, area sales manager for Bay Equity Home Loans. One of the valley’s most experienced mortgage brokers, Picore started his career in commercial lending straight out of college. After working in home mortgage lending with Wells Fargo, he weathered the 2008 mortgage market meltdown. Building on hard lessons learned during that time, he started a branch of W.J. Bradley Mortgage, gradually expanding it from Glenwood Springs to Frisco, Basalt and Edwards.

Three monks stand at the front of the room, chanting. Their murmuring, singing voices rise and fall in a persistent wall of sound. Rows of adults sit at attention, droplets of water tracing through hair, down foreheads, cheeks and necks. An insistent bell clangs, clangs, clangs. Delicate threads of smoky incense hang in the air. Monks ritually move along rows of participants. Upon completion, they rise and stretch, restored, sharing hugs, smiles and quiet conversation.

Having been recently invited to a Let Them Roar (LTR) recording session, this poem intrigued me. Stoking the excitement, my housemate, long-time local Dave Stumpler, recalled LTR’s singer Olivia Pevec as a kid. “She’d just belt it out, walking around in her little cowboy dresses and her boots, just singing away.”

I imagine that the inside of my brain looks like an ornate, archaic old library. The floors are beautifully tiled and big Palladian windows let in the light, but the place is disorganized and noisy. Fragments of old songs float like dust motes in the air, and the stacks are stuffed with idiosyncratic collections: The warhorse room contains full classical symphonies, complete with scratches from old vinyl recordings. Next door, there’s a vast collection of song lyrics: Need a phonetic rendering of Never on Sunday, in Greek? Here you go! Or the full eight minutes of Don McLean’s American Pie? No problem. I can’t remember the number of my bank account, but I can easily retrieve every word of that one!